Web Development and Search Engine Optimization Tools

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) increases web traffic by making it easy for search engines to find and index your site.

The problem is, most people do this process backwards. SEO is applied after the fact, usually after the site is performing poorly on both paid and organic searches. SEO is something that should start early in the planning process, long before the first line of HTML is written. What follows are links I use before, during, and after web development.

Please let me know if any of these links are broken or are of particular value to you so I can keep this list current. Just zap me an email.

Alexa - You should try to acquire links from high traffic pages. Use this to determine traffic rankings.

Domain Tools - You want older, established sites linking to you, and in general, you want to avoid partnering with newer, low ranked sites. So you need to research potential partners when building links. This tool will help you determine the site was created.

PageRank Checker - It's better to acquire a few high-quality links, versus a large quantity of low quality links. Lots of other great tools here too.

Fresh Content.net - Great source for free RSS news feeds on lots of different subjects. Mostly general topics like news, music, etc.

Keyword Density - It's important that target keywords be contained in your title and be dispersed throughout the content. However, keywords should not be repeated more than 4 to 6 times per 350 words of content.

YellowBrix - Great source for very specific issues such as medical services, programming, aeronautics. Paid site.

phpBB - phpBB is a popular open-source bulletin board software written in PHP. However, I do not recommend this for e-commerce. vBulletin is a better choice.

Review-Script - Adding reviews to e-commerce sites can have a positive impact on search engine rankings, not to mention a positive impact on your customers. Review script allows users to rank products on a one to five star scale and make comments.

vBulletin - vBulletin is a canned PHP/MySQL bulletin board that is powerful, scalable, and fully customizable. It's user friendly and is easy for new members to learn and use. The software is not free, but it's also a bargain compared to building from scratch.

WordPress.com - Free blog service. Lots of terrific plugs for this very popular software. Host must support PHP and MySQL. Word Press can host your blog, but it's not recommended as search engines tend to lump all blogs together.

Wordtracker - Keyword suggestion tool. Wordtracker collects search data from dogpile.com and metacrawler.com. Free version limits number of key words, but paid site gives you instant access to thousands. But remember, more is not always better.

Maps and Geocoding

arcGis - Warning! This site is the 'black hole' of time. Once you enter, you will never leave.

MyBlogLog - Social network that includes popular widget that show your visitors recent visitors.

MySpace - A community of 200 million members, but has a tarnished reputation of late.

StumbleUpon - Social network where members submit pages and rate them.

Twitter - Powerful and popular way to commumicate short bursts of information (140 character micro-blogs) to individuals and companies interested in what you are doing right now. Use the API to monitor buzz. It is the cheapest instant market research on the net!

YouTube - The most powerful way to attract visitors. Put together a video and hope it goes viral!

Google Analytics - Awesome. Free. You simply can not afford not to take full advantage of what Google has to offer. Did I mention it's free! Make sure you filter out your own internal traffic. Otherwise you will skew your reporting.